It is probable that no one will enjoy Life, the Universe and Everything as much as its predecessors. Once you expect the unexpected, it is no longer unexpected, and that which is startling and amusing only as long as it remains surprising cannot endure being spun out into trilogies. The books, in any case, cannot be as funny as the radio show: the dialogue of Marvin the paranoid android, for instance, is pretty dull in print but a real scream when rendered in … [a] magnificently morose (and electroni...

Whimsy is currently in short supply, a deficiency that makes Douglas Adams' new book all the more welcome. Life, the Universe and Everything … is like nothing ever published before except, perhaps, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, also written by Douglas Adams. Once again the protagonist is a reluctant wanderer named Arthur Dent; once again his intergalactic guide is an extraterrestrial named Ford Prefect. Vooming around the void accompanied by a two-headed, three-armed creature wh...

Humour is not that rare a quality in science fiction, but Douglas Adams's contribution to future mock must surely be unique: he violates SF taboos while at the same time and quite obviously regarding them with deep affection: you only hurt the genre you love. He is a treasure and science fictioneers should place a preservation order upon him. Life, The Universe and Everything …, his latest guide to such spatial hitch-hikers as everymanic Arthur Dent, the insufferable Ford Prefect, and guru Sla...